Many companies employ contact centers, such as call centers, to provide an interface for exchanging information with customers. In many call center environments, a customer service representative initially queries a caller for information, such as an account number, credit card number, or the nature of the inquiry. The customer service representative may be a real person or a virtual agent that typically routes the call to the appropriate destination after collecting initial information.
For example, many call centers employ interactive voice response (IVR) systems, such as the CONVERSANT® System for Interactive Voice Response, commercially available from Avaya Inc., that provide callers with information in the form of recorded messages and to obtain information from callers using keypad or voice responses to recorded queries. Ports on the IVR systems are often referred to as “automated agents” or “virtual agents.” Typically, a media server receives a call, obtains the appropriate Voice extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) page (i.e., a script for the call) from a dedicated local or remote server and then executes the VoiceXML page for the caller.
Increasingly, call centers are leveraging the power of the Internet to support multimedia communications. Multimedia communications allow a call center to efficiently exchange information with a user using a number of different media. For example, a call center can employ a video portion of a multimedia communication to present a caller with a graphical menu of the IVR options, and use the audio portion of the multimedia communication to receive a spoken or keypad menu selection from the user. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/983,558, filed Nov. 8, 2004, and entitled “Dynamic Content Delivery,” incorporated by reference herein, discloses a system for the delivery of relevant content to a caller engaged in a call, for example, with a call center.
The disclosed dynamic content delivery system allows a call center to provide a richer experience to the caller by sending multimedia content, such as images, video, audio or text, to a caller that is based on the state of the conversation. For example, a call center can present a caller with additional information about a product that the caller has inquired about (or one or more complementary products), including video advertisements or web pages with links for further information. As another example, when a caller contacts a doctor's office to make an appointment for a physical, the caller may receive a video reminder to fast for 12 hours before the appointment.
While the disclosed dynamic content delivery system greatly improves the perceived experience of a caller, and allows a call center to more effectively present information to a caller, it suffers from one or more limitations, which if overcome, could further improve the utility and performance of such dynamic content delivery systems. In particular, in a call center environment, a call is typically transferred and connected to one or more destination nodes. Each destination node, however, may not support all of the media types supported by the caller. For example, if a call is established between a caller and a call center, and a caller is initially presented by the IVR system with a graphical menu of the IVR options, the caller may make a menu selection that results in the call being transferred to a destination node that does not support a video connection. Thus, upon transfer, the caller will no longer receive a video connection and will unfortunately experience a “dark screen.” This is not desirable from the caller's point of view, and constitutes a lost opportunity for the call center to effectively present information to the caller.
A need therefore exists for methods and apparatus for presenting default content to a caller when a media stream of the specified type is not available and during transitional periods, such as times of call setup, transfer or hold. A further need exists for a method and apparatus for providing default media services to endpoints.